Sunday, April 10, 2005

Found this posted on the Inside Out_666 Yahoo group for metal fans. The article is spot-on, 'cept I think punk rock fans are just as loyal when they get older as metal fans. And my two favorite metal music experts, Deena Weinstein & Eddie Trunk, are quoted in the article.

Ethan Sacks of the Columbia News Service has publishedthe following article in the Naples Daily News:

Discordant heavy metal music struck a chord with manyteenagers during the late '70s and '80s. The loud,fast, guitar-driven music has since languishedcommercially as successive generations have chosennewer soundtracks to fuel their rebellion against theestablishment. Many of the original fans, however,never moved on, even as they aged, started careers,got married and had children of their own.

"If you're seeing a 40-year-old at a concert, you'requite sure at 18 you know what kind of music he wasinto," said Deena Weinstein, author of "Heavy Metal:The Music and Its Culture".

"For so many people the music of the most emotionalpoint of their lives is a touchstone that they returnto for the rest of their lives," said Weinstein, whois also a sociology professor at DePaul University."They're keeping their own youth alive."

Eddie Trunk, 40, a disc jockey who hosts a nationallysyndicated heavy metal show, said fans of other music,like pop or new wave, don't lose their love of musicwith age any more than rockers.

"But I think the difference is the audience is not asvocal and passionate about those groups, and doesn'twear it on their sleeve as much as a hard rock orheavy metal fan," Trunk said.

Heavy metal fans wear their passion on more than justthe sleeves of skull T-shirts and black leatherjackets. For many of them, the music — louder andfaster than anything heard before — became a way oflife. The mostly white, mostly male and mostlymiddle-class listeners found a feeling of power overtheir parents, over their teachers, over the jocks atschool that treated them as outcasts.

Metalheads, or headbangers, as they called themselves,built up a community linked through underground tapeswapping networks and conversations about METALLICAlyrics while camping out online for concert tickets.

Scott Ian, guitarist for ANTHRAX, asked to explain whyso many of the same fans have stuck around for theband's entire 20-year history, used a typical comment,the words "metal" and "rules" with an unprintable wordbetween. "It gets under your skin, it gets in yoursoul."

That has kept bands like ANTHRAX in the studio and onthe road.

The band MEGADETH's latest album, "The System HasFailed", sold a respectable 250,000 copies with noneof the MTV airplay that the band enjoyed in the late'80s and early '90s.

Similarly, acts like JUDAS PRIEST and MOTÖRHEAD maynot be headlining stadiums anymore, but they stillgrossed more in ticket sales last month than big-namemainstream acts like ELTON JOHN, TOBY KEITH and ALICIAKEYS, according to Pollstar, the industry's mainticket sales tracking service.

"I just saw IRON MAIDEN with Bruce Dickinson lastyear, the first time I've seen them back togethersince the old days. It was like a geriatric ward,"said 34-year-old metal fan Joe Bottiglieri, who addedthat he wished he would see more young fans at shows.